


Magnolia

by love_stella



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Multi, please read warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-05-16 06:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19312147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love_stella/pseuds/love_stella
Summary: What catches his eye is a hint of blue floating around the water, but before he can reach his hand in to check he’s hit with another coughing fit, only this time he’s able to catch most of the petals in his palms so he can inspect them to make sure his eyes aren’t tricking him. Surely enough, Taylor didn’t even cough up any of Tony’s flower this time, the petals he’s holding are shorter and a pale blue that Taylor might find beautiful if they didn’t just come out of his lungs.





	Magnolia

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [aimerai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimerai/pseuds/aimerai) in the [PuckingRare2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2019) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Hanahaki AU: make it as light or as heavy as you want.
> 
> IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW IS MENTIONED IN THIS FIC DO US BOTH A FAVOR AND CLOSE THE PAGE RIGHT NOW TO SAVE US SO MUCH EMBARRASSMENT.
> 
> Thanks to Aimee, Heather, Nat, Ellie, Ali, and Lotts for all the cheerleading i love you all. 
> 
> Warnings: as this is a hanahaki au, where unrequited love results in flowers growing in the lungs and eventually/potentially killing the person affected, warnings include blood, vomiting, and characters accepting their own deaths, see end notes for spoiler warnings and if i missed anything please let me know.

A bunch of the guys are crammed onto Mikey’s bed to watch the Make 150 Count videos and Taylor’s not sure what he’s expecting from Tony’s but it’s definitely not Tony wearing a crisp white button up and being on the floor helping disabled children paint “Go Canada” signs. He’s also not expecting the fluttery feeling in his lungs that has him doubled over coughing, causing the guys to tell him “please don’t die dude, we need you,” and Dylan patting him awkwardly in the middle of his spine. Taylor feels something silky in his palm when he manages to breathe again, and almost dismisses it before something in his brain tells him that nothing but air should be coming out of his lungs when he coughs so he looks and can’t believe what he’s seeing: a fragment of what looks like belongs more in a garden than in a hotel room filled with hockey boys. If Taylor didn’t know any better, he’d think it was a flower petal, but it  _ can’t _ be. 

“Dude, you ok?” Blake asks, getting up on his knees to look properly at Taylor, which of course draws the attention of every other boy in the room. 

“’M fine,” Taylor says, brushing the petal off on his jeans and doing the only thing he can think of to distract the boys: chirping Tony’s hair in the video, and it works, the boys all jump on Tony and start ruffling his hair, Taylor’s coughing fit long forgotten. 

\---

Taylor manages to forget about the flower petal until he goes out to lunch with Tony and a couple of the other guys and Tony accidentally nudges Taylor’s foot with his own and the next thing Taylor knows it he’s in another coughing fit and this time when he looks at his palm there’s no mistaking what he’s holding as anything other than a flower petal: pale white and vaguely rounded at the tip and oh so delicate it feels like the slightest movement is going to crush it. 

“What are you doing with a magnolia blossom?” Mitch asks when he sees Taylor staring at his hands. 

“Huh?” is the only thing that comes out of Taylor’s mouth. 

“Don’t look at me like that, my mom loves flowers,” Mitch says. “We’ve got magnolias in the backyard, and  _ that’s _ definitely all over the grass.” 

“I dunno, it must have gotten into my hair or something?” Taylor suggests, and luckily Mitch is happy enough with that that he nods his head and dives into his food. 

Tony, for his part, just watches them silently, smiling when he realizes that Taylor’s ok before stealing a piece of lettuce from Taylor’s side salad and smirking as he chews it. Taylor can feel another petal coming up but somehow manages to force it back down with a smile and a “hey what the fuck man.” Everything’s fine, he tells himself, and for the rest of lunch the petals stay in his chest where they apparently belong now. 

When Taylor does some late night googling, he supposes that it’s ironic that magnolias are supposed to help with lung problems and chest congestion when they’re what’s causing his current lung problems and chest congestion.

\---

The petals only come up when Tony smiles or laughs or sends Taylor that stupid smirk emoji he loves so much, it’s just Tony, Tony,  _ Tony.  _ Honestly, Taylor’s not surprised that he’s in love with Tony, there’s no way his heart stood a chance with just how  _ much _ Tony is all the time, the way his bark of laughter can make a whole room smile, the way his sharp sense of humor can make Mat shut the hell up, not to mention how beautiful he is. 

Taylor’s heard the rumors that Tony’s getting traded to Erie as soon as World Juniors is over and he’d give anything to make them false and stop the white petals from coming at the thought of them on the same team together for the next few months. Taylor can handle long distance pining, maybe being away from Tony will make his feelings go away even though he knows that’s not how this works. The small white petals will turn into full on magnolia blossoms before they turn a blood red and there’s nothing he can do about it without giving up his feelings and well, that’s not something he’s willing to consider right now. Maybe later, maybe before it gets so bad that he can’t even think of sharp cheekbones and disarming smirks without choking, but not right now. 

\---

Taylor goes to the doctor as soon as he gets back to Erie, he knows he has to get an official diagnosis as to why he keeps coughing up flowers, needs to hear that he’s not crazy, that this is actually happening to him. 

Taylor’s not sure what the doctor actually said when the x-rays came back, showing the petals that are starting to coat his lungs, not that the doctor would tell him anything he doesn’t already know. He’s seen the disease before, watched it carve a space for itself inside Dylan’s chest not once but twice. Dylan always did give too much of himself away without a second thought. 

Taylor’s pretty sure Dylan would have let it kill him if Connor came back to Erie after the draft, has heard Dylan talking about how dying for love is poetic even if the love isn’t returned. It’s not that Connor doesn’t love Dylan, you’d have to be blind not to see the way Connor cares for him, it’s just that Connor’s thoughts won’t stray for anything other than  _ hockey hockey hockey _ . 

“Could you live with yourself knowing that you’ll see someone every day, have to talk to them, breathe with them, work with them, knowing that you gave up the love you had for them?” Dylan whispers, trying to keep the bright orange rose petals from ripping themselves out of his throat. “I can’t -”

Taylor rubs his back as the mention of Connor forces a particularly vicious coughing fit out of Dylan’s lungs, and honestly no one needs to know about the petals Taylor hides under their seat. At this point Dylan’s coughing up more full-on flowers than individual petals- Taylor thinks they could be beautiful if they weren’t stained with his friend’s blood -which the doctors said would happen as the disease progressed, tangible proof that unrequited love is killing him. 

The only good thing Edmonton ever did for Taylor was take one of his best friends away from him so that another could live. Dylan goes under the knife the day after Chiarelli announces that their latest First Overall would be staying with the team, and Taylor spends hours trying to distract Alex from the fact that doctors are opening their friend’s chest and yanking out the roots that have entrenched themselves so deeply in his lungs. 

Apparently Dylan didn’t learn the first time, and it breaks Taylor’s heart when he walks into Dylan’s room and sees the desk covered in scraps of long yellow petals. There’s no blood, which means that the love is as new as the petals littering the desk. Dylan’s phone rings - the god-awful “music” that Mitch picked out for himself - and Taylor doesn’t need Dylan to start coughing to know that Mitch is the reason Dylan’s going to risk his life again. 

Thank god Mitch has no concept of personal space and barges into the bathroom while Taylor’s trying to clean up Dylan’s latest bouquet as Dylan wipes the blood from his lips. Before Dylan can even start choking again, Mitch is by his side bearing the most impressive kicked-puppy expression Taylor’s ever seen. 

“Oh Dyls, why didn’t you say anything?” Mitch asks, cutting Dylan off before he can think of an excuse as to why there are petals in the sink and all over the floor. “You know I love you, right?”

Taylor’s not surprised when all that comes out of Dylans mouth is muttered gibberish until Dylan realizes what Mitch just said and a smile overtakes his face, somehow bigger than the one on Mitch’s face. 

The flowers are gone, and with that, so is Taylor. He really doesn’t need to see more of Mitch’s tongue the same place where flowers were trying to escape a few minutes ago. 

He can only hope to be so lucky, even if the chances of Tony returning his feelings are slimmer than he’d like to admit. 

\--

When Tony asks if he wants to train together over the summer, Taylor’s heart says yes before his brain gets a chance to catch up and say that “no Tony, I can’t spend the entire summer with you because whenever I look at you I start to choke on magnolia blossoms”; and Taylor can’t even complain, the thought of spending more time with Tony while he can is too much to resist. Coughing up more petals soaked in blood is worth hearing Tony’s voice or seeing his smile, besides, Taylor’s gotten good at hiding any of the evidence, even if it means the guys chirping him for always needing to piss whenever he runs to the bathroom. 

Taylor’s dicking around on his phone waiting for Tony to show up to their third training session, laughing at a stupid cat meme Alex sent him, when he feels someone sit next to him on the bench and before he realizes what’s happening, Tony slings an arm around his shoulders and scoots closer until their legs are pressed together. 

“Sup T, whatchya lookin’ at?” he hears Tony ask, but right now the only thing Taylor can think about is the feeling of petals forcing themselves up his windpipe and threatening to spill out of his mouth, so instead of answering he shoves his phone into the hand that’s not around his shoulders. 

 

One of the boys sends the group chat a gifset someone made and before he even gets a chance to play it Taylor’s doubled over, the petals trickling out one by one until he’s clutching at his throat trying to get a breath in before more petals come. It’s ironic, Taylor thinks, that someone chose  _ My Heart Will Go On _ as the soundtrack to the gifset. Tony’s heart will go on, but Taylor’s body is doing his best to ensure that his own heart will not. 

\--

Taylor’s happy enough to go out to lunch with Mitch and a few of the other guys, anything that will distract him from the message Tony sent asking if he wants to hang out later that Taylor wants to reply to so badly but every time he does, the petals coming up his throat remind him that hanging out alone with Tony is a  _ very bad idea _ . 

The more Taylor thinks about it, the sadder he gets. He doesn’t even realize that he’s stabbing his food until Mathieu calls him out on it, insisting that “dude it’s already dead you don’t have to kill it again.”

Listen, Taylor knows how to use chopsticks -Dylan wasn’t kidding when he told the TSN people that they go to Aoyamas all the time- but he’ll take whatever chirps the boys throw at him if it means he keeps the flowers in his mouth. Right now he knows that if he opens his mouth round white petals stained with blood will spew out, so he’s content to poke at his food until he can find an excuse to run to the bathroom. If Taylor didn’t know better he’d think that his body was trying to punish him for letting Tony skip out on lunch by forcing him to miss it too. 

It’s not like Mitch is doing any better at the sushi-eating thing - he asked for a fucking fork as soon as the waitress got to their table, the coward. For a second Taylor forgets about the flowers pushing at his lips, too caught up in the way Mitch is smiling while trying to find the right filter for  _ another _ selfie to keep his laughter to himself. Well shit, guess that trip to the bathroom is happening right now. 

Taylor’s shocked that he doesn’t knock over any chairs or run into any servers carrying scalding hot soup or 10 glasses of water on his way to the bathroom, or at least, he thinks he doesn’t. Any thoughts that aren’t  _ sink toilet now hurry _ are in the back of his mind and Taylor barely shuts the stall before he’s hacking up his latest bouquet. 

He’s about to flush the evidence down when something catches his eye: no, not the fact that the once white petals are now almost completely soaked in red, Taylor’s been expecting that for a while now. What catches his eye is a hint of blue floating around the water, but before he can reach his hand in to check he’s hit with another coughing fit, only this time he’s able to catch most of the petals in his palms so he can inspect them to make sure his eyes aren’t tricking him. Surely enough, Taylor didn’t even cough up any of Tony’s flower this time, the petals he’s holding are shorter and a pale blue that Taylor might find beautiful if they didn’t just come out of his lungs. 

\--

Taylor still doesn’t know much about flowers, the first thing he does when he gets back to his room is type  _ small blue flowers _ into google images and click on the first image that looks remotely like the petals that he’s growing in his chest, and finds that they’re forget-me-nots. Taylor can’t help the heart wrenching laugh he lets out, how fitting that he’s now coughing up flowers for a boy who’s just going to forget him in the fall while he’s forced to remember everything.  

\--

Taylor plays one preseason game for the Bolts before Yzerman calls him into his office to tell him what he’s known since the latest x-rays came back showing two sets of flowers coating his lungs: he’s going back to Erie for a season of long bus rides, no paycheck, people whispering that he’s not good enough to cut it in the NHL, and most importantly: no Mitch and no Tony. He’ll have an entire season alone while Mitch and Tony get to play hockey together - probably in Syracuse, everyone knows the Bolts are stacked, they’ll be lucky to get a call up this season - and Taylor will probably have to suffer through seeing them doing the stupid cheesy karaoke videos the team cranks out while the only thing he’s cranking out is more fucking flowers.  

\--

It's ironic, Taylor thinks as he stares into the sink at the red, white, and blue flowers clogging the drain, that this is still happening while he's getting ready to join the rest of the boys on their way to the rink for their game against the Americans, like his body is trying to remind him about the heartache of last year’s Gold Medal game. As if Taylor doesn't remember it enough on his own. As if he doesn't still think about the silver medal shoved into one of his dresser drawers. As if he doesn't remember seeing the look on Nico Roy’s face when he missed his shootout attempt. As if he didn't cling to Dylan and Mat and Thomas and the 18 other boys who just had their hearts ripped out in front of thousands of people. 

 

Logically, Taylor knows that Buffalo and Syracuse are only a two hour drive apart and that the Crunch don’t have another game for a few days, but he’s still not expecting to see any of them waiting behind the glass before he steps onto the ice for warm ups. Jake starts to make a joke about last year’s team coming back for revenge when he sees Connor pressing his face to the glass, and Taylor would normally tell him to shut up but the only thing he can focus on is Mitch’s face as he yanks Tony’s beanie off his head and shoves it over Connor’s face. Shit. Mitch and Tony are not supposed to be here. Not at the gold medal game. Not when Taylor needs to focus on the ice under his skates and the puck and the yellow jerseys they’re trying so desperately to keep away from Carter. 

 

Taylor knows that if he lets himself look for Mitch and Tony in the crowd he won’t be able to hold their petals back for as long as he needs to, so he asks Mikey if he can see them. 

“No man, I can’t see them anywhere,” Mikey says after he scans the crowd, and well. Taylor’s not sure which is worse: knowing that they’re in the building cheering him and Canada on but he can’t see them, or the petals trying to suffocate him the more he thinks about them. 

Taylor's pretty sure Mikey knows about his feelings for Tony - he was there during the Cup finals and ran into Taylor trying to hide his blood soaked tissues and stark white flowers at the bottom of the trash - but he trusts Mikey enough to keep his secret. 

As soon as the horn blares, Taylor rushes off the bench and locks himself in the nearest bathroom, unable to hold the flowers back any longer. It’s not until he he hears the door open that he remembers that this bathroom’s lock is broken, and before he knows it Mikey’s crowding over him, eyebrows creased with concern and a question on his lips before he sees what’s in the sink. 

Taylor curses himself for not being quick enough to hide the blood soaked petals, but it’s too late anyway. 

“Wait T, who else are you in love with? There's two sets of flowers,” Mikey asks, tears in his eyes at his friend’s pain. 

There’s no point in lying to his friend, so Taylor explains everything, how he’s in love with two of his best friends and has been for months and there’s nothing he can do about it until it kills him.

Taylor feels like he should probably be confessing his feelings to Tony and Mitch somewhere more romantic instead of Michael McLeod in a bathroom, but he's already decided that they  _ can't ever find out _ . 

“Oh T, I’m so sorry,” Mikey says, wetting a paper towel and wiping the blood off Taylor’s chin. “But you have to tell them, you’d want to know wouldn’t you?”

“Know what?” Taylor asks, “That I’m literally killing someone who loves me? I can’t do that to them.”

He knows he shouldn’t be getting mad at Mikey but he’s just so fucking  _ tired _ of it all that he can’t help but raise his voice at his friend. Logically, he knows that Mikey’s right, that telling them could solve everything, but there’s one problem: there’s no way they love him back, and knowing  _ that _ is a fate worse than choking on some flowers. 

“They’re your friends T, of course they love you,” Mikey pleads.

“Not like this,” Taylor whispers, not resisting when Mikey pulls him into a hug or the tears that have started to fall.

They break apart when they hear footsteps stop in front of the bathroom door, Mikey rushing to distract whoever it is while Taylor sweeps the blossoms into the trash and splashes water on his face to cover up his tears. 

“Hey, coach wants us in the locker room,” Jake says, not looking at the two of them before closing the door in Mikey’s face.   

“Guess we better go,” Taylor says, grateful for the distraction and leaving the room before Mikey can get another concerned word out. Or at least, Taylor’s telling himself it’s concern and not pity that’s written all over Mikey’s face.

\---

_ Will this game ever end _ , Taylor thinks to himself as he returns to the bench. Yes, Canada’s winning and they’re about to get revenge on American soil for last year, but he’s having a hard time ignoring the voice in the back of his head that says that he needs to do more to impress Tony and Mitch in the stands and all that does is threaten to bring up more flowers. 

The final horn rings and the boys charge over the boards to mob Carter, Taylor forces his legs to carry him over and he thinks he does a good enough job pretending to be as excited as his friends are, lets Mikey and Kale scream in his face and tries to scream back but then he catches a glimpse of what might be Mitch’s face pressed against the glass and it’s all Taylor can do not to start coughing then and there. 

He knows he should be happy for his teammates, and he  _ is _ , but he really just wants to get off the ice before he starts coughing up bloody flowers but he’s fucking stuck until the medal ceremonies are over. The ceremony passes in a blur, Taylor thinks he smiled when the gold medal was placed around his neck but he’s clenching his jaw so tightly it probably came out wrong and he hopes he didn’t offend the official but he honestly doesn’t care right now. 

Taylor isn't thinking about the tv cameras in their faces or the fact that he can't legally buy alcohol in Buffalo when he shouts “let's get fucking drunk” at his boys. The only thoughts going through his mind are  _ if Tony and Mitch come to the locker room I'm going to die and if I’m trashed it won't hurt.  _

\---

Taylor doesn’t realize that Mikey’s nowhere to be found, is too busy downing his fourth beer to care or think that Mikey might be looking for Tony and Mitch to bring them into the locker room to be Taylor’s knights in slightly dingy armor.  He should have known better than to think that, because now he’s rushing to the deserted showers and  _ he can’t breathe _ with the size of the lump in his throat.  _ I won’t even get to see them before I’m dead _ Taylor thinks to himself, clutching his throat and sinking to the floor, coughing as hard as he can to dislodge the flower but  _ it won’t come out _ no matter how hard he tries. He keeps coughing and  _ finally _ it comes out, and Taylor would be shocked to see that the flower is a magnolia and forget-me-not that have melted together, just like his feelings for Tony and Mitch, he can’t tell one ends and the other begins. 

Taylor faintly hears a commotion that sounds like “where’s T?” but another flower is stuck in his throat and his vision is starting to fade so whatever the boys are doing outside isn’t really his problem right now. 

“Oh shit,” a voice that Taylor prays isn’t Tony’s says when he feels hands that _ can’t be _ Mitch’s firmly slamming the space between his shoulder blades trying to dislodge the flower.  Taylor thinks that that’s supposed to hurt but all he can think about is how the flower’s finally climbing up his throat until it’s on the floor for everyone to see, and when he doesn’t even have to look up to know that Tony and Mitch are crouched over him, tears in their eyes as their eyes dart between Tony’s face and the bloody flowers on the white tile. 

“What-” Tony chokes out, voice quiet enough that Taylor can barely hear him over the blood rushing to his ears.  _ They know _ , he thinks,  _ and now they’ll be sad and that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.  _

“I love you,” Taylor confesses, “Both of you.”

“How long?” Tony asks, “How long has this been happening? Why didn’t you tell us?” 

“What Tony’s trying to say is that we love you too,” Mitch says, interrupting Tony’s impromptu interrogation. 

“You do?” Taylor asks, hoping that he’s not hearing wrong, but it can’t be that simple, can it?

“We do,” Tony and Mitch say in unison, and for once Taylor doesn’t feel anything except tears threatening to spill from his body: the flowers are gone. 

“You do,” Taylor says, before Mitch leans in and presses his lips to as much of Taylor’s face as he can reach. 

Tony’s much more careful, taking the time to wipe the blood from Taylor’s lips, letting his thumb linger for a moment longer before leaning in and pressing their mouths together in what has to be the best kiss of Taylor’s life. Taylor’s never been happier to let them take turns taking his breath away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler warnings:
> 
> -Dylan has the disease twice, once with Davo and once with Mitch, and is willing to die rather than cut the disease out at its roots.  
> -Taylor accepts his own death when he finds out that having two sets of flowers means that doctors can't remove them and has some semi-graphic suicidal thoughts. 
> 
> I'm @aIexfortins on twitter if you wanna cry about these boys with me


End file.
